Thomas Wingfold. Volume III by George MacDonald

Although satisfied that, after what Rachel had said to the men, / there could be no impropriety in her making use of the privilege / granted her, Helen felt oddly uncomfortable at first. But soon the / fancy came, that she was listening at the door of the other world to / catch news of her Leopold, and that made her forget herself and put / her at peace. For some time, however, the conversation was / absolutely unintelligible to her. She understood the words and / phrases, and even some of the sentences, but as she had no clue to / their drift, the effort to understand was like attempting to realize / the span of a rainbow from a foot or two of it appearing now and / then in different parts and vanishing again at once. It was chiefly / Polwarth, often Wingfold, and now and then Drew that spoke, Rachel / contributing only an occasional word. At length broke something of a / dawn over the seeming chaos. The words from which the light that / first reached Helen flowed, were the draper's.

"I can't think, for all that," he said, "why, if there be life / beyond the grave, and most sincerely I trust there is -- I don't see / why we should know so little about it. Confess now, Mr. / Polwarth! -- Mr. Wingfold! " he said appealingly, " -- does it not seem / strange that, if our dearest friends go on living somewhere else, / they should, the moment they cease to breathe, pass away from us / utterly -- so utterly that from that moment neither hint nor trace nor / sign of their existence ever reaches us? Nature, the Bible, God / himself says nothing about how they exist or where they are, or why / they are so silent -- cruelly silent if it be in their power to / speak, -- therefore, they cannot; and here we are left not only with / aching hearts but wavering faith, not knowing whither to turn to / escape the stare of the awful blank, that seems in the very / intensity of its silence to shout in our ears that we are but dust / and return to the dust!"